Preventive law isn’t a category taught to undergraduates, but it’s something that Leman Solicitors believes in to the extent of setting up a new business and legal consultancy to provide exactly that.

Leman Consulting will provide proactive best legal practice for business, according to managing partner Larry Fenelon: “Solicitors provide reactive legal services for businesses. Leman Consulting provides proactive best legal practice for businesses. We all know that prevention is better than cure.”

Fenelon added: “Over the years, Leman Solicitors have been fortunate. We have advised many business leader clients about problems and crises. This has given us valuable insights. We have seen how the best businesses operate well and, crucially, how they can be improved. Leman Consulting was established so we could make those insights available to our clients.

“We want to partner with best-in-class businesses which value minimising legal risk. They want to avoid large public fall-outs with executive members, employees, suppliers, contractors and other key stakeholders. We also found that many legal departments in companies need legal resources for short term but large scale projects without break-the-bank secondees or expensive hires.

Spinning Plates

In Fenelon's view, in-house solicitors are spinning plates and are usually under resourced. "They can barely cope with their workload and simply don’t have the capacity to look underneath the carpet for legal risks. We are filling the gap in areas like contract management, IP audit, legal training and legal department strategy.

In Association with

“Similarly we are aiding public and civil servants in transforming legal functions from paper-heavy to paperless operations and delivering efficiencies by digitising how they do business.  We find ourselves increasingly project managing large-scale projects to deliver these on time and on budget. This is not a skillset that most lawyers have.

“That’s why our headcount on the consultancy side is increasingly non-legal.  We are avant-garde in law. We are associated with the future of law, legal futurists and legal technology. It’s time for a shake-up in how law is practised — 99% of businesses will agree with that. We are excited about our new consultancy offering and truly believe this is the future of law. Our service is all about modern law for modern business.”

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Photo: Larry Fenelon (left) and Leman partner Ronan McGoldrick